Terms from Horse Racing: across the board; dark horse; hands down; get one's goat;
shoo-in; also-ran a loser in a race or contest; front runner
Akeelah and the Bee: plexure; trouvaille; miscible; ratiocinate; terete; graveolent;
semelfactive Roscian eponym: eminent as an actor (or actress)
Eponyms: Roscian; thespian; Mutt and Jeff; Oscar; oersted; tontine;
tomcat (crib)
Toponyms: tabby (taffeta); tarantula, tarantism, tarantella; artesian;
Stepford; solferino; magenta; Boston fern; tuxedo (pugilist, round-heels)
Long-time readers will recall our previous
themes of horse words. To mark last weekend's running of the
Your wordcrafter isn't knowledgeable about
horse racing. I apologize for any errors, and appreciate any corrections.
across the board covering all categories
[Australian] Prime
Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello have finalized a last-minute
package of across-the-board tax cuts
which will be announced in
the federal budget on Tuesday.
Forbes, May 7,
2006
Origin: One can bet on a horse to come in
first, or second, or third (win, place, or show) . Hence the three top finishers
will be posted on the winner board. If you place all three bets, you are
betting 'across the board'.
Was Oxford English Dictionary, which says
this is a U.S. English, a bit provincial in its research? It gives no usage
examples before 1950 (citing Websters) even though the term goes back to the
very beginning of the century. For example, a bit of 1910 doggerel from the
Washington Post and other papers includes the couplet, "I really wish I
could afford / To play my horse across the board." The earliest use I've
found seems to suggest insider information: "Elnus,
a 100 to 1 shot,
heavily played across the board, ran second."
dark horse a
competitor, among many, who makes (or is tabbed as having the potential to
make) an unexpectedly good showing
Most dictionaries apply the term only to a
success achieved in horse-races and political races. This errs: the term
includes potential success in other fields. From today's press:
Everybody loves
Phil
We also like Tiger, Retief and Vijay. Want a dark horse?
How about Mark Hensby.
The Journal News, May 9, 2006, "handicapping" a golf tournament.
While the race could go to either the
tortoise or the hare, there is another animal in the contest: a dark
horse. Nintendo Co. is rolling out its console, dubbed Wii,
about the same time as PlayStation 3.
Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2006
Etymology: OED dates
'dark horse' to a 1831 Benjamin Disraeli novel. (I think it's unclear if
Disraeli's word 'dark' refers to the horse's success or simply his color.) Bierma
notes, "The darkness may be figurative -- fans were 'in the dark' about
the horse's abilities -- or it may be somehow literal [in that] 'horses that
regularly won races were darkened to conceal their identity and increase the
betting odds.'"
Let's resolve this. This cite precedes 1831
and shows that the "darkness" is figurative, not literal, to the
benefit of those bettors "in the know".
What is termed an outside
or dark horse always tells well for heavy bettors.
Near the end of a race, a jockey with a big
lead might relax his tug on the reins and let the horse "coast" past
the finish line. That is, he would finish an easy victory riding "hands
down".
hands down easy;
easily
So say the dictionaries, but would you agree
that the term is only used in the sense of "surpassing others"? For
example, one couldn't say, "This was an hands down parking space to
get into; I could park hands down."
Buffy and Cordelia
appeared, walking along as if they were the best of friends, and Wilow knew
that that took the weirdness prize, hands down.
Christopher Golden, Nancy Holder, Child of the Hunt (Buffy the Vampire
Slayer)
get one's goat to anger; to annoy; to irritate
OED's earliest cite is 1910, but one can find
quite a few more back to 1908. The most prevalent theory traces the phrase to
horse racing, saying that a goat would be stabled with a horse, to calm it.
Thus stealing the goat, before a horse-race, would tend to disrupt the horse's
performance.
This race-track theory has some appeal. We
do know that goats were believed to calm other animals (see 'Judas goat', esp. entry of 12/29). A contemporary account
notes that goats were indeed stabled with horses in some areas, but adds that
this was because the goat was considered lucky; hence to 'get one's goat' was
to take away one's luck. (Washington Post, Sept. 25, 1910)
Nonetheless, I doubt any race-track theory.
Why? Because I've found no early use of the phrase, and no reference to
goat-stealing, in any connection with horses or horse-racing. Indeed,
substantial numbers of the early references are in the context of baseball.
shoo-in a certain
winner; one sure to succeed
In their 1948
National Convention, the Democrats under President Harry Truman were in
particular disarray. [details] As a result, Republican Thomas E. Dewey was
considered a shoo-in.
William Safire, Lend
Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History
The term began as a reference to a race that
was fixed: the jockeys held back and would "shoo" or urge ahead the
pre-arranged winner. Now, however, the term has no connotation that the victory
is illicit.
also-ran a loser
in a race or contest. (Wordcrafter note: tends to imply a unimportant and
forgettable one, not close enough to be notable.)
A newspaper reporting horse races would name
those who won money for their bettors. It would then, under the heading
"also ran:", then list the others.
In 1961 R.J.
Reynolds had the largest market share (almost 35 percent), greatest size, and
highest profitability in the tobacco industry. Philip Morris, on the other
hand, was a sixth-place also-ran with less than 10 percent market
share.
Jim Collins, Built
to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
front runner the contestant in the lead in a race or other competition
Let's say you are
the kind of person who might contribute $1,000 to a [political] candidate.
The one candidate you won't contribute to is a sure loser.
So front-runners
and incumbents raise a lot more money than long shots.
Steven D.
Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of
Everything
The term comes from horse racing but it did not mean the horse in the lead while a race is in progress. When you think about it, there would be little occasion to use a word with that meaning, since the race would be finished, and determined, within a few dozen seconds.
Rather, the term is from trotting horses.
When a top horse attempted to set a record, he would be given perfect
conditions: a horse on each side to pace him, and a horse in front to break the
wind resistance. That front horse was the 'front runner'. The following quote,
antedating OED's, that makes this clear.
She closed a
brilliant season [in 1903] by trotting in 1:58½, aided, however, not only by
side runners to make the pace, but by a front runner with a wind
or dirt shield on the cart. Naturally this lessened the task for the trotter,
as it removed much of the resistance of the air.
Evening Telegram
(
Have you seen the current movie Akeelah
and the Bee, which I highly recommend? It follows the contestants in an
extremely stressful, demanding competition, but not the sort of sport you would
think of: the
This week we'll look at words from this
year's bee. Each day I'll give you the phonetic pronunciation, so that you can
try your hand at spelling the word; the link given will reveal the actual
spelling to you.
'plεksjŏŏę(r) a plaiting or
interweaving
[εdress; ŏŏfoot;
ęanother (schwa)]
An intruding rose
has stolen a nest among the ~s of the vine.
J. P. Kennedy
(credit OED for quote)
truvαy a lucky find; a windfall; something
interesting, amusing, or beneficial discovered by chance
[ugoose; αpalm;
start]
My dear, you are a
perfect ~.
Thackery, Vanity
Fair
Spelling of yesterday's word: plexure
a plaiting or interweaving
missib'l (of liquids) capable of being mixed together, in any
proportion (In other words, like alcohol and water; not like oil and water.)
The opposite is im~.
Thomas Kielinger, National Review, Oct. 24, 1994
(Yesterday's word: trouvaille a
lucky find; a windfall)
răsh'
ē ŏs' * nāt' (rash ee OS uh
nayt) to reason methodically and logically
[*=schwa] [More often used in its tion
form.]
Yet though I could
never have been a scientist, I had scientific as well as imaginative impulses,
and I loved ~ation.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised
by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
For such a
superhuman being, ~ation was too tawdry and ordinary a matter. A
Duce did not reason; he inspired
R. J. B.
Bosworth, Mussolini's
Yesterday's word: miscible (of
liquids) capable of being mixed together. Yesterday's word and today's are from
the movie, not from the actual bee.
tĕ-REET
cylindrical (but typically with slight taper at the ends) and smooth
[from Latin for 'rounded'. Used of fleshy
leaves, as in orchids, or other plant parts; a picture is worth a thousand words.]
Some leaves are ~,
that is, pencil-like and round in cross-section
Alec Pridgeon, The
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Orchids
Yesterday's word: ratiocinate to
reason methodically and logically
gr* VEE *l*nt having a rank smell
[*=schwa]
Butter, as in all
hot climates, is utterly vile: I should prefer the gr*-VEE-*l*nt
palm-oil.
Richard Francis
Burton, Wanderings in
Yesterday's word: terete
cylindrical (with tapering ends) and smooth
A reader notes: Graveolent from Latin gravis 'heavy' and olens
'smelling'. Cf. saying: pecunia non olet. (Money doesn't stink.) From Suetonius
Twelve Caesars. Supposed to have been said by Vespasian to his son
Titus. The emperor had levied a urine tax on public latrines in
Today's hard-to-spell word pertains to
words, specifically to verbs. Click link for spelling.
seemεl-fζk-tiv
of a verb: expressing the sudden and single occurrence of an action, e.g. cough;
sneeze; glimpse; flash; tap
[ε=dress; ζ=trap,
bath (
seemεl-fζk-tivs are punctual events which have no result state.
Robert D. Van
Valin, Jr., Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Yesterday's word: graveolent having
a rank smell
This week we'll look at some eponyms words
derived from people's names - and we begin with an obscure one.
It also fits last week's theme. In last
year's national spelling bee two spellers fell in the 18th round, leaving one
champion. They missed on our recent word trouvaille, and on today's
word.
Roscian eminent
as an actor (or actress)
After Quintus Roscius Gallus, eminent
comic actor, noted in the works of his friend Cicero. Shakespeare mentions
Roscius twice, in King Henry VI iii (What scene of death hath Roscius now to
act?) and in Hamlet.
So, the making of
a great actor is not so much a matter of "talent"
but the presence
of a psychological need so powerful that the would-be Roscian
surmounts all obstacles
Marvin Kaye, ed.
and contributor, in The Game Is Afoot: Parodies, Pastiches and Ponderings of
Sherlock Holmes
(Yesterday's hard-to-spell word is spelled semelfactive.)
We follow with a second word pertaining to
acting. It is much more familiar, but you might not have known it is an eponym.
thespian an actor
or actress; also, related to drama and the theater
[After Thespis, the traditional father of
Greek drama]
Linda Berdoll, Mr.
Darcy Takes a Wife: Pride and Prejudice Continues
As those familiar with Jane Austen's Pride
and Prejudice may infer,
Mutt and Jeff a pair of comically mismatched people, esp. one tall
and one short; also, a pair of lovable losers
[from the title characters in the early-20th
century comic strip by Bud Fisher]
Gene Siskel and
Roger Ebert
Long after
highbrow critics made reviewing movies an art form,
this Mutt and Jeff duo, through their nationally syndicated
television program, made it a spectator sport.
Robert E.
Schnakenberg, St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture
Oh, sure. Jon and
I are a regular dynamic duo the Mutt and Jeff of the espionage
business.
Patrick Larkin,
Robert Ludlum, The
And now I open my
eyes, look down at my breasts. Well, there they are, old Mutt and Jeff.
Flat as pancakes.
Elizabeth Berg, Open House: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
Over 63 million votes were cast to determine
the winner, announced yesterday, of the American Idol television show.
So it seems fitting to announce a show-business award today.
Oscar (tradename)
each of the annual movie awards of the
After a gentleman named Oscar Pierce,
who had nothing to do with the matter. The name is from a 1931 remark by
Margaret Herrick, librarian at the Academy, who commented that the statute
reminded her of her Uncle Oscar.
oersted the unit
in which magnetic-field intensity is measured
[after Hans Christian Oersted, Danish
physicist (17771851)]
The word 'oersted' was a spelling challenge
featured in the movie Akeelah and the Bee, last week's theme.
It is also is an example of a class of
eponyms: units of measurement. Apart form the familiar units for length,
weight, time and temperature, almost all units of measure are eponyms. Familiar
examples are the ampere, volt, and watt (French physicist Andrι Marie Ampθre;
Italian physicist Count Alessandro Volta; and Scottish engineer and
inventor James Watt.) A list of over three dozen can be found at the
bottom of Wordcraft's Eponyms page.
tontine an
investment fund in which the income is divided amoung those contributors still
alive, with the principal going to the last survivor
[After Lorenzo Tonti, a Neapolitan
banker, who initiated the scheme in
The problem these days
is living too long. Pensioners have to live off the fixed income
. Even with
only modest inflation, this income falls in value every year. The lot of the
aged is therefore one of creeping poverty. The Prudential
is about to launch
an annuity based on the tontine principle - which will pay
survivors more as other members of the scheme die off. The tontine,
in effect, provides insurance for old age.
Edward
Chancellor, The Spectator, March 24, 2001
A reader notes: Tontine was used in a Simpsons episode. Mr. Burns, with a group
of soldiers, including Grandpa and a brutish looking fellow named Ox, found
some Nazi treasure. Mr. Burns suggested a tontine, and the only one who knew
what what that meant was Ox, which turned out to be short for "
In 1760 there appeared an anonymous work
titled The Life and Adventures of a Cat. The protaganist was a cat of course,
specifically a male cat named Tom and frequently called 'Tom the Cat'. The work
became quite popular, and from it 'Tom' became a name commonly used for a male
cat. Previously a male cat had been called a gib or gib-cat
(which itself may be an eponym, from 'Gilbert') or a ram cat.)
tomcat a male
cat (to tomcat: [of a man] to pursue women promiscuously)
I think the only
reason [New Orleans] got that [wicked] reputation was because of those old
girls who lived in tiny houses called cribs .
Those girls must
have known that they'd never do business with anybody except seamen and trash
and country boys on a toot. When big spenders went tomcatting in
the thirties they wanted privacy and soft pink lampshades ...
Joe David Brown
and Peter Bogdanovich, Paper Moon
Bonus word:
crib a small abode;
a tiny room; also, a saloon, 'dive', or brothel
We've just now completed a theme of eponyms
(words from person- or character-names), so it's natural to continue with a
theme of toponyms (words from place-names). We ended with a cat-word eponym, tomcat,
so let's now begin with a cat-word toponym.
tabby 1. silk
taffeta (originally striped), esp. with a moirι finish 2. a
striped or brindled cat; or a she-cat (further, obscure meanings are
omitted)
[After the Attabiya district of
Baghdad where the taffeta was made; the district is in turn named after a
character named Attab. The striped cat is thought to be named for the
fabric and she-cat perhaps from combining the stripped cat with the female name
Tabby, short for Tabitha.]
Bonus word: taffeta a fine crisp lustrous fabric [from Persian for 'to shine';
but see quote]
The name
[taffeta], derived from Persian, means twisted woven. Taffeta
is in the same class and demand as satin made of silk. The cloth is made of a
plain or tabby weave, and the textures vary considerably.
Piece-dyed taffeta is often used in linings and is quite soft. Yarn-dyed
taffeta is much stiffer and is often used in evening dresses. Taffeta is also
used in ribbons, umbrellas, and some electrical insulation.
Columbia
Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
Leah said we had
to name it Ricky Ticky Tabby but no sir, it's mine and I'm
a-calling it Stuart Little.
Barbara
Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
tarantula a large
black wolf spider of southern Europe (or similar hairy spiders of the Americas)
[after the Italian seaport of Taranto;
the spiders are prevalent in that region]
tarantism a
disorder characterized by an uncontrollable urge to dance [at one time
prevalent in the Taranto region, and thought to be caused by the tarantula's
bite]
tarantella rapid
whirling South Italian dance, once thought to be the sovereign remedy for
tarantism
[Note: in this context, sovereign
means "of the utmost potency".]
And all of these bodies
and plates were compelled to move by the convection currents in the earth
below, currents that are churning ceaselessly and that are making the plates
execute these unending mazurkas and tarantellas up above on the
mantle top.
Simon Winchester,
A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California
Earthquake of 1906
A reader notes:
Remarkable epidemics of dancing mania were called chorea.
A special type of water well is named after
the French province of Artois, in which it was first bored. We give
examples of literal and figurative uses.
artesian of a
well or spring: with water rising spontaneously to the surface, due to
underground pressure [as a result of the water-pocket lying at an angle]
the enemy were
resisting firmly, in bomb-proof trenches with a new artesian
well.
T.E. Lawrence, Seven
Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
My physical,
mental, and spiritual life is like an artesian well always full
and overflowing.
L. B. Cowman,
James Reimann, Streams in the Desert
Stepford
robotically conformist and compliant; attractive but without individuality,
emotion, or thought
[From the fictional suburb in The
Stepford Wives, a 1972 book and later movie. In this superficially idyllic
suburb the wives are eerily content zombies in "traditional" roles.
But the secret is that the men have replaced their wives with obedient robots.]
Who won?
Who knows?
Messrs. Bush and Gore proved beyond doubt that no matter who's elected,
thanks to an innovative political alchemy that turns a living human being into
an exact facsimile completely devoid of spontaneity, the U.S. will have its
first Stepford President.
Alan Abelson, Barron's, Oct. 9, 2000, on a debate between presidential
candidates
It is June 1859. Two decisive battles at the
Italian towns of Magenta and Solferino bring an end
to the war between the French and Austrians. With those town-names in the news,
merchants soon seize upon them for advertising. (Similarly, a century later,
the bikini swimsuit was named for Bikini Atoll, site of a
then-recent A-bomb test.) Many 1859 ads (antedating OED) use those town-names
for shawls and cloth, but it's unclear if they mean a style, a color, etc.
Here's the earliest I've found:
A dry goods house in New York advertises "Magenta Long Shawls," and a Richmond eating shop announces that it serves up "Solferino Soup."
Wisconsin Daily
Patriot, Aug. 5, 1859
In any event, the names eventually settled
into use to name and advertise new colors of fashion, from colorful dyes that
chemists had just then begun to produce from coal tar.
solferino a bright
crimson dye; its color
magenta a deep
purplish-red dye (chemical name: fuchsine); its color
There is some confusion of precisely what
color is magenta. Some dictionaries have it shading more to purple than
to red; some call it light rather than deep; and on the web you can find magenta
used to describe quite different colors (contrast this with this). My reading is that the term now means a strong
color, more red than purple, that may be dark or pale.
The web leaves me unclear as to who named
the color. Clearly fuchsine was named by Frenchman Emmanuel Verguin, who
developed a production process for it. But it may be that Englishman Edward
Nicholson discovered another production process and gave fuchsine the marketing
name magenta.
The Boston fern is a familiar plant.
It's obviously named for the city of Boston but it might just as well have
been the Philadelphia fern, for it was first found in a Philadelphia grower's
shipment to Boston.
Ferns were a major part of home dιcor
throughout Victorian times, which meant there was an industry to produce and
distribute them.
Nurserymen
discovered the sword fern, sometimes called the Florida wild fern, during the
late 1800s. Put this plant in a pot inside a building, and soon fronds enlarge
to 3 feet or more of draping loveliness.
Easily propagated
, this fern
quickly became the most popular houseplant of the Northeast.
In 1894, a
Philadelphia grower sent 50,000 plants to a Boston distributor. They were so
different that for two years they were considered a different species. By 1896
it was decided that [it] was merely a sport of the wild Florida native,
so
that greenhouse variety became Nephrolepis exaltata cv. 'Bostoniensis,' or
simply speaking, Boston fern.
Ocala.com, The
Ocala (Florida) Star-Banner, July 30, 2005
The Algonquin Indians named one of their
tribes with their word meaning 'round foot'. Shipley explains, "The Wolf
tribe in New York was called in scorn by other Algonquians "round
foot", implying that they easily fell down in surrender." (This would
be similar to our adjective 'round heels' for a woman or a pugilist [that is, a
boxer] who is [ahem] "easily put on his or her back".) Others,
however, say that 'round foot' simply meant the wolf, the totemic animal of the
tribe.
One way or another, the 'round foot' became
the Indian name for the tribe and, naturally, for the region and lake where the
tribe dwelt. The English-speaking settlers took the same Indian name, in
anglicized form, for the region and in two towns founded there.
Much later a posh and exclusive club for the
ultra-rich was located there, and in the 1880s a new style of dinner jacket,
without tails, was introduced in that club and became popular there. The club
was named for the region, and the jacket for the club. Thus all trace back to
the original Indian name of the region and tribe.
That Indian word for 'round foot' was tuksit
or p'tuksit. When anglicized, tuksit became the names of the
towns of Tuxedo and Tuxedo Park, of the Tuxedo Club there,
and of the tuxedo jacket popularized in that club. Thus, a man
wearing a tuxedo is a wolf etymologically, as he may well be in conduct!
Bonus words:
pugilist a boxer
round-heels 1. of a woman: of easy virtue 2. of a
pugilist: having a glass jaw